Sunday, April 12, 2009

This is my entry in a seven player, Altered Book Round Robin I am participating in with the Travelers H'art yahoo group. This is Halcyon's book - with a "Self Portrait" theme and is one of those thick board children's books and on each page there is a mirror. I knew exactly what I was going to do when I looked it over. This photo is of myself at about age 2. I'll have to talk to my grandmother to find out for sure. Anyway, I have an album of old photos my mom gave me from way back when that actually survived what seemed like 100 moves here and there - and - and a damp, dusty basement where it was discovered. Some of the pages had the negatives sandwiched between the pages. There are three photos that describe the scene - I had enlarged them at the community school darkroom one day when I was playing with making B&W prints from color negatives in my photography class.

The first photo shows me seated on my grandfathers' lap sitting at the kitchen table with a fresh cake sitting in front of us. The second photo is me sitting by myself, in front of the cake, stealing a taste. This photo is the end result - and I should ask how long it took for me to destroy the cake and paint myself with the cake. It was chocolate, and to this day is not really my favorite cake...but a very tasty medium!; ) Sb

Friday, April 3, 2009

This card went to Jane in my S.S.U.S. group. The white is a piece of crumpled, torn vellum. It is not as transparent because it is cardstock weight. I have a huge IRIS box of scraps with leftover bits & pieces...it comes in handy when making these cards. I covered a metallic green pipe cleaner with several green fibers to decorate the edge of the card. I've been wanting to try that technique for a while now. The free space is stamped and punched from a leftover section of alcohol inked paper. "Lucky Numbers" stamped in peeled paint distress ink with my EK typewriter letter stamps [love those lil' babies - I finally got my hands on the number set to match]. The little green stapled tag is from a baggie of tags I collect from my DH dry cleaning. My way of artfully recycling them. The bingo card is a large wood mount stamp by hero arts [i think - i have to look at it and post later] stamped with Stazon on green metallic paper...

now off to work on the next set of cards for my stamping 101 class that is on tax day...Sb

My S.S.U.S. [Snobby, Stuck-Up Stamper] Group has some unique & challenging themes. This one was one of my favorite, though a stumper at first. I broke out my huge IRIS box of scraps with leftover bits & pieces...then began sifting through the scraps of paper, unused stamped images, leftover stickers, etc. AND my work began to come to life on it's own.

The background is a 6x6 square that I tried an Anna Griffin paper folding technique on for another project, but after making one, quickly decided that I wasn't going to make 6 more so it was retired to the "BIN". I happened to have long strips of the same p.p. so I folded it to create a dimensional frame to contain the folded quilted background. The winged boy was stamped on vellum and the school girl stamped on gloss paper, so I colored them both with my Marvy brush markers. The girl's wings are leftover vellum heart stickers. I stamped the 'friends forever' on a piece of scrap green with my ticket punch. This phrase is from a new little set of stamps with bling and a cute owl stamp that I just had to have. I added some toole and fibers from another matching IRIS bin with ribbons & stuff...and tied it off with a lock & key.

I hope that my friend Jane enjoys this as much as I enjoyed creating it : )Sb

WELCOME to the blog for sbartist (Susan M. Brown) - mixed media artist and graphic designer.I frequently lurk around in the dark creating art while all in the world are asleep. What will I dream up next...